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The Club Defined:
Putters are golf clubs defined specifically by the Rules of Golf for specific uses and as such have restrictions place on them unlike those for irons and woods.
Definition: A “Putter” is a club with a loft not exceeding 10 degrees designed primarily for use on the putting green.
Definition: The “Putting Green” is all ground of the hole being played that is specially prepared for putting or otherwise defined as such by the Committee. A ball is on the putting green when any part of it touches the putting green.
Materials, Structure and Impact:
Because the putt requires only low-speed impact, the putter can have design features – such as structural members, attachments and joints – that may not stand the impact forces experienced by an iron or a wood club, and whose purposes may be purely aesthetic, or for feel or forgiveness.
The feel one gets from a putter is mainly the sound during impact, but it is also the vibration after impact. The vibration generally comes from flexible structural members and/or off-center impact. For instance, even though the structural members of the putter, i.e. the attachments and/or cross members (in a multi-beamed, lattice - type mallet design) seem to be rigid, in many cases during impact these do give a little and thus affect the feel of a putt.
Another contributor to the feel of a putter is the material it is made of, which in most cases is milled or cast steel. To soften the sensation and sound at impact, designers often place an insert in the face of the putter. In some cases this insert is designed to affect the spin rate on the ball as well.
At this point, it is important to note that the Rules do not permit any treatment to the face that will unduly influence the movement of the ball, including how much more or less spin it imparts when compared with a standard steel face. Despite this admonition, some putter designers claim that their treatment to the face or insert does have a significant effect on the spin on the ball. And while claims of this nature form a large part of the marketing efforts for many putter companies, the only thing that seems to be certain is that inserts absorb some of the force and impact, with the result that the ball leaves the club face at a lower speed than with a club without an insert.
If an insert is not part of the putter’s design, aluminum, brass or other soft metals are the materials of choice. In most cases these softer materials will have the benefit of producing a good sound ( and thus feel) and it will not be necessary to have an insert.
The fact is that a well-designed putter should have 4 degrees of loft (or its equivalent) in order to launch the ball out of its standing position depression on the green. The putt itself is predictably consistent. The ball leaves the ground slightly with backspin and touches down to start skidding and sliding. The distance from the putter before it has pure rolling spin is about 13% of total putting distance. What one needs to avoid is a putter that will drive the ball into the side of the depression – which by the nature of depressions is inconsistent in depth – and hop out differently for each depression depth. A putter with a loft of 2 degrees or less will be inclined to do this.
The most accurate method of actually making a putter is by machining it to the exact dimensions required. Robotic CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines take a block of material, and based on a design fed into it, they mill the entire head down to 0.001 of an inch, every time.
